Time Is, Time Was
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Ella explores her new palace, and makes a discovery.


**A/N:** ... No. No, I don't know why I wrote this, either. Uh. My most sincere apologies to Terry Pratchett and JRR Tolkien?

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and make no profit.

* * *

Ella Saturday is pretty sure she likes her new palace. It's not a very welcoming place at the moment- it reminds her too much of Lilith –but it will be. They are already saying of Lady Saturday that she is a stitch off the old zombie, that she is as strong-willed and independent as her father was, and that she will do things differently. She is exerting this will for change on the palace itself: it has so little of the Genuan flavour she loves, it could almost be a transplant from Quirm or Ankh-Morpork.

Lady Saturday says this has to change, therefore it changes. Ella wanders through her changing palace and eats proper Genuan food, and she is pleased.

Ella does not really understand how to rule, but she has a suggestion of an idea that she should know every corner of her realm. She is familiar with some parts of the city; she goes out with two guards, no more, and explores the rest. Nothing happens to her, not even in the roughest, most dangerous quarters of the city, because she is Lady Saturday.

In her leisure hours, as few as they are these days, she meanders through her palace, examining every corner, every room. She also takes notes. That plaster is crumbling... the paint is flaking. That's hideous wallpaper. There's a nest of mice in here...

One day she comes to a room, the door to which is not locked, but jammed. Lady Saturday puts down her pad of paper and stick of graphite. Ella applies her shoulder, and the door gives way; she enters cautiously, and the dust of ages makes her sneeze.

The room is medium-sized. The paint on the walls is old and dark; the only light is provided by a fairly small window, mullioned and filthy. The sun is at just the right angle to pass through the window, or the greyish light that is all it affords would be even murkier. From the threshold, Ella peers at the object in the room: it sits on a small table, covered by a cloth, and by the look of it, it is spherical.

Curious, Ella steps carefully into the room, over to the table. She blinks as her eyes adjust to the light, and touches the cloth. It is deliriously soft to the touch; old, old velvet, smothered by grey dust. It might once have been dark blue, but time, dust and bad light confuse Ella's eyes.

Ella catches hold of the material and Lady Saturday hesitates. If she dies here, Genua will have no ruler, and it will be split and torn, and it will be all her fault, and this is her city and she must take care of it...

Ella has been around far longer than Lady Saturday and she wins. Quickly, she whisks off the heavy cloth, scattering a grey mist of dust, and sneezes haplessly for a few moments before wiping her watering eyes, rubbing her itching nose and trying to make out what, exactly, she has unveiled.

It's a stone, she observes, baffled. Like obsidian, except that obsidian doesn't come in perfectly spherical rounds that size. (Does it? She doesn't know, but suspects not.) It is polished to a mirror-bright shine, with veins of gleaming grey and white running through it. Ella reaches out, and touches it, fingertips butterfly-light. It rocks slightly, and hurriedly, she steadies it with both hands... and then she looks, and gives a choked indrawn gasp of fear.

A man's hands, an old man's _hands_, and burning, _burning_, from flesh to dust and cracked, blackened ivory.

It takes all Ella's strength to turn her palms outwards and shove it, hard, away from her. It rolls slowly, mockingly, off the table and onto the floor, and she leaves hurriedly, her skirts stirring the thick dust.

(His hands. His _hands_!)

Ella orders the door to be blocked up, and sees it done herself. She is almost relieved when the head workman bows to her, and displays the door, off-limits forever. She orders a search for the little window; it is found, and blocked also.

Lady Saturday would like to go back: she reasons that there must be a use for such a thing, that it must be important- but Ella is the stronger, and Ella will not allow it.

* * *

One day the longing is particularly fierce, and Ella cannot fight hard enough. Lady Saturday has the door unblocked, and she enters.

The palantír lies where Ella left it, and Lady Saturday takes it out. It takes her in, and Genua is never at peace again; by the time fifty years are up it is almost razed to the ground, the people fled, and contains nothing more than a skeleton garrison, desperately trying to fight the evils that old Lady Saturday unleashed.

* * *

One day the longing is particularly fierce, and Ella barely holds out. Still, she does it; Lady Saturday is quashed, and the order to unblock the door awaiting her signature is burnt.

The palantír lies unforgotten on the floor of a room in the Genuan palace. Long gone are the days when King Elessar Telcontar turned it to his will: still longer the days when it turned Denethor son of Ecthelion to its will. Fortunate it is for Genua, once Osgiliath, city of the host of stars, that Denethor's many-times great-granddaughter is made of wiser stuff.


End file.
